NEXT MEMOIR UNIT STARTS SEPTEMBER 8th // THEME: VOICE
Voice is a slippery thing to try to identify in writing. You know it when you see it. A writer’s voice might even be the number one thing that draws us to read someone’s writing, and to want to read everything they’ve ever written. A great writing voice makes us feel like we know the writer and that reading their book is like hanging out with them. That can be a really intoxicating experience.
It’s hard to build a class unit around such an integral but almost invisible thing, which is why I’ve often avoided talking about it. Voice… just do it! But at the same time, one of the most common questions I get is essentially “How do I improve my writing voice?”
Some people might even say either you have a writing voice or you don’t, and there’s nothing about it that’s learnable. But I think everything is learnable in writing. We just need to stretch ourselves, and maybe even do some non-writing things in real life that help us learn how to express ourselves bette on the page. Regardless, this development is not going to happen if we don’t try.
So let’s work on developing our writing voice.
My new book Abrazo is available for sale, exclusively right here through me. This is a poetic photo essay about walking through the streets of different cities during one of the hardest years of my life. I became interested in taking photos of doors and walls as a way of grounding myself, and I wrote street poetry on top of them. I assembled that material into one long poem with beautiful full color photography, and it is called Abrazo, which is the Spanish word for “hug.”
2026 Writing WORKSHOPS
NEXT Workshop startS Tuesday, June 30th
You can sign up for any one unit or join for the whole year. Each six week unit is a great container for generating new writing, gaining new tools, and meeting a group of other writers doing the same thing. I’ve seen so many important friendships and collaborations form in these workshops, and a mountain of incredible writing.
These classes focus on everything from reawakening your creativity after a long dormancy all the way through submitting for publication and imagining the structure of your own book.
NICK Jaina
Nick Jaina was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 2015 for his memoir Get It While You Can, which is now in its third printing. His writing has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, McSweeney's Quarterly and the journal Oregon Humanities. He has released many wonderful albums under his own name, including 2025’s The Monster Mash. He co-founded and was music director for a ballet company in New York City called Satellite that involved dancers from Juilliard and the New York City Ballet and performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, garnering praise from The New York Times. He has composed scores for feature films and documentaries, including All Sorts, Cement Suitcase, and Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire.
His new book, Abrazo, is a poetic photo essay, featuring beautiful photography paired with profound words.